Gita 04.03 – Krishna reveals his glory to those who delight in that glory

Thank you Krishna is speaking to Arjuna that very knowledge certainly by me and to you of yoga is spoken that is ancient, that ancient knowledge is spoken by me to you now and why is it spoken because you are my devotee and you are my friend this knowledge is a secret it is a mystery an extraordinary, topmost mystery now in the previous two verses Krishna has talked about how the knowledge of yoga was given right at the beginning of creation by Krishna to Sun God and it was coming in a parampara a parampara of Raja Rushis but then that knowledge was lost over time so Krishna is saying now I am giving this knowledge to you again so this verse indicates that firstly when Krishna gives knowledge it is not new it is renewed, the purpose of Krishna giving knowledge is not to give something new but to renew that which is given in the past but which is lost that very knowledge I am giving you in this world sometimes newness is stressed as a sign of specialness or this is the latest gadget this is an app which nobody else has got in the world this is a car which is the latest model and I am the first customer in India this way sometimes a product or a service or a gadget is stressed is glamorized for its newness but even in today's culture where new things are glamorized there is still the charm of the old if a company says that we have 123 years of medical reliability we have been treating patients for 123 years we have been providing drugs for 123 years that itself is also a marker of reliability, authenticity so Krishna when he gives knowledge the outer world is changing and we also try to change the outer world in various ways using science and technology so therefore the newest thing is often of value in the outer world but then in the inner world there are essentially the same forces that are at war there is our lower side with lust, anger, greed, envy, pride and illusion and there is our higher side and they are at war and yoga enables us to overcome the lower side and connect our higher side with the highest lord who is eternally by our side but whom we sideline when our lower side takes over so yoga enables us to connect and this knowledge and this process is eternal whether we are in modern or pre-modern or post-modern times people are still troubled by lust, anger, greed and people in order to be happy still have to overcome these anarthas so knowing this a wise person focuses on the time tested the time honored, the reliable and what is reliable is our relationship with Krishna our eternal relationship our relationship with Krishna is the supremely reliable thing in this world and the knowledge for developing that relationship is what Krishna is giving here so rahasyam hi etu duptamam stop most secret now it is not the secret because Krishna wants to keep it a secret it is a secret because most people are not interested in ultimate questions people are interested mostly in immediate questions where can I get food, where can I get sex where can I get sleep so sometimes the heart longs for meaning but the belly settles for pudding that means sometimes we start thinking about deeper questions but then when we find that we can't when we find that or when we find some immediate pleasures coming up for us then that search for meaning for deeper understanding that gets just sidelined and we settle for meaning settle for pudding so like that the secretness of ultimate knowledge is because of our obsession with immediate things but still Krishna compassionately comes and keeps giving periodically the highest knowledge so Krishna is saying now Arjuna I am giving this knowledge to you and that just utmost secret is now being made available by Krishna to Arjuna now when Krishna makes this knowledge available to Arjuna he is giving reasons you are my devotee and you are my friend now Krishna will again and again tell in the Bhagavad Gita for example in 9.1 he will say that because you are not envious of me so I will give you this knowledge Krishna also used the word non-envious in in 3.32 he says the envious cannot understand me or those envious they don't have faith in me so here Krishna is talking about the opposite of when we envy someone we can't love that person when we love someone we don't envy that person when we love someone that person's glory gives us joy because we see ourselves as connected with that person so Krishna says that those who are my devotees to them I reveal my glories because then if they understand my glories then their attraction to me will increase further but for those who are envious if I speak my glories to them then their envy for me will increase and thereby they will stay they will become further envious, further offensive they will go further away from me so therefore I don't speak my glories to them so when he is speaking yoga so at one level the knowledge of yoga can be said to be the knowledge of karma yoga where it is simply detached and I would say disentangled but at a more positive level the word knowledge of yoga is not just about karma yoga it is about bhakti yoga and bhakti yoga has as its object Bhagwan so when we want to devote ourselves to someone we understand the glory of that person and understanding that glory is the central principle of bhakti so Krishna will while talking about yoga he will talk here in the first section of the Gita about karma yoga say from 6th chapter karma yoga will move on to dhyana yoga and it will culminate in bhakti yoga and from 7th chapter onwards Krishna will speak focused on bhakti yoga itself till 12th chapter and he will again come back to bhakti yoga in the 18th chapter while referring to it intermittently throughout the Gita so the point is Krishna is giving this knowledge and he is giving this knowledge to a devotee so we also if you want to acquire this knowledge now we may not identify ourselves as devotees but we can have a devotional disposition that means ok let me Prabhupada writes in the introduction of the Gita that at least theoretically accept that Krishna is God and then try to understand the Gita so we accept ok if there is a God and Krishna is God then how would that affect me in my life and how can I live in the light of that fact so if I try to live in the light of that fact let me see what happens let me see how my world view changes how my life changes how my heart changes and that way let me do a spiritual scientific experiment so we can see it that way so we even if we don't have don't self identify as devotees we can as a test case try to have a devotional disposition while studying the Bhagavad Gita and while practicing the recommendation of the Bhagavad Gita and in contrast somebody may self identify as a devotee but not have a devotional disposition that means the person parades around going to temples or acting as if I am a devotee to others especially this may attract respect in a pious cultured society and the person may delight in that respect without actually internally developing deep respect for Krishna and offering oneself to Krishna so for such a person the Bhagavad Gita will not be comprehensible it will still remain a mystery so when we approach Krishna with a devotional disposition then that devotional disposition it opens the lid of the bottle of honey so that the honey bee can relish it without the devotional disposition the lid of the honey bottle remains closed and that's why people can't perceive people can't relish the honey they are like honey bees who are licking the bottle from outside so Krishna is telling Arjuna that you are not a honey bottle licker you are a honey seeker and because you are seeking honey that means you are cultivating devotion so I will open the bottle to you and I will give you the honey I will share this knowledge with you so the word Bhakti or Bhakta that word comes repeatedly in the Bhagavad Gita but that specific word has now occurred explicitly for among the first times in the Bhagavad Gita here Arjuna you are a friend and you are my devotee the friendship also refers to one of the five rasas and ultimately we all have one of the rasas with Krishna which will be revived when we become purified so here just as when we cultivate devotion for Krishna and we try to serve him then the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita will become more and more illumined in our heart too for that illumination to be sustained we need to steadily practice Bhakti or rather we need to be steady in trying to cultivate the devotion of a Bhakta even if we don't build Bhakti so Krishna is telling that that knowledge I am giving to you because you are receptive and you are showing your receptivity through your devotion so in this way devotion gives us access to timeless knowledge which gets lost from time to time and which is made reaccessible by Krishna by his merciful intervention as he is doing here to make that timeless knowledge available to Arjuna once again.